"Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine."--Fran Lebowitz

Thursday, March 6, 2014

The Wine Blogger's Prayer

Lord, we come to you today with humility and reverence, and ask that you hear our pleas, for our hearts are open unto you as quickly as Stelvin allows, yet are as pure as the bark of Quercus suber. You led us to the path of blogger, encouraged us to begin our journey to discover wine, and, as you instructed us, we invited all of mankind to join us on that journey. Lord, it is a lonely journey. My room where I composeth my posts is as quiet as the grave, and my comments section is as barren as the wine list at P.F. Chang’s. I send my prayers twice weekly into your blessed Internet, and the silence with which they are greeted is as empty and soulless as a Wine Spectator editorial. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Shanken, I shall fear no Laube, for thou are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Though I’d prefer it, Lord, if your staff posted a link to me instead.

Lord, we ask that you bless us with the blessings you have bestowed upon our most devout brethren. Saint Thomas of Wark, of the Holy Distribution Trinity System, who hath many followers, which is a supreme miracle. Saint Dude. Nah, nah, nah, nah-nah-nah-nah, nah-nah-nah-nah, Hey Dude. Lord, you have favored the Dude, have bestowed your greatest blessings upon him, and yet we can see no difference between his talents and ours. Just as he Vimeo, so doth we Vimeo. Just as we Tweet, so doth he twat. Is not our twat his equal? Hath thou so forsaken us that Saint Alder has ascended? Saint Alder of Catatonia, duller and emptier than the Amish FaceBook page? Lord, how you make us suffer. Have we fallen so far from grace that we are lower than Saint Blake the Petulant? Must we beggeth for alms on our blogs as he? Oh, Lord, hear our pleas.

Lord, we ask that you deliver us an audience greater than the number of people allowed in a Denny’s rest room at any one time by thine fire department regulations. We doeth as thou decree. We publish worthless and incoherent wine reviews and ask only for thine angels of UPS to bring us said wines for free, so that we may spread thy gospel, Drink what you like! Hear me, brothers and sisters! Drink what you like! Break free of the bonds of scholarship and hundreds of years of wine traditions! Drink what you like! Though your wine be corporate and more manipulated than a Florida election, drink what you like! Though your wine bears a label that insults your intelligence, calls you bitch or fat bastard, drink what you like! We shall bear witness, Lord, that we drink what we like, and, yea, we like what we drink when thine angels of UPS bring it for free. Please deliver us an admiring audience for our fatuous and simpleminded tasting notes. Let the words ring out! Great Post! Great Post! Great Post! Love, Mom.

Lord, we ask that you monetize our blogs, for we have talent, Lord, talent that comes from you, talent you should reward for you are responsible for our talent. Allow the winemakers of the world to see our talent, to admire that we Drink what we like. Allow the finest wineries in your kingdom to see the power and the glory that is wine blogging. To see that our future is their future, that your children of the Internet will cast out the powerful naysayers of print, the privileged paper tigers of the press. Your children of the iPhone will abandon the 100 Point Scale like the passengers of the Titanic abandoned ship, plunging into the cold, dark, unforgiving sea of stupidity that is their peer group. We are that cold, dark sea, Lord, and we pray that you monetize us, for we deserve it for our hard work and ability to type. Your children of Twitter will forsake the teachings of Saint Eric and Saint Jon, abandon them as they must abandon any prints of darkness. Your children will no longer continue beneath the fold, but dwell on the surface, where true knowledge lies. As the passengers of the Titanic hath discovered, there is only safety in the shallow, Lord, and none are more shallow than we.

Lord, we are the humblest of your servants. Yet we gather together and give each other awards, since you have forsaken us, and given us so little attention. Are you not the least bit embarrassed for us, Lord? We unashamedly praise each other, as baboons groom, the lowest of us attentively offering up our swollen fun parts to those more powerful in the hopes of being lovingly mounted in the parking lot of Meadowood after the Napa Valley Wine Writers Symposium. We yearn, Lord, to be the mounters, not the lowly Canadian mountees. Must we wait, Lord, must we wait so long for our palates to be recognized? Our friends are dazzled by our wine knowledge, why won’t strangers accept our wine thoughts as gospel? We have a CSW, and are in a wine tasting group. What more is there? In your name, we preach your truth. Drink what you like! And yet we feel forsaken, unheard, like Alice Feiring at a UC Davis Winemaking 101 course.

Lord, the simplest of us gather to have Wine Wednesdays and give each other strokes, as Boy Scouts often discover the joys of situational homosexuality. Other simpletons reach out to your least blessed children, Lord, your most intellectually deficient children, your children who seek wisdom from wine blogs, and offer to teach them the basics of wine with splashy graphics and using the simplest words. Forgive them, Lord, they are but the crazy guy in the park lecturing the pigeons, the retired professor lecturing to the empty class room in his mind. They are idiots, they are feebleminded, they presume to teach though they have the qualifications of a one-legged stripper and are just grasping at poles. Yet they are us. Others provide wine pairings for the stupid, who are much in need of wine advice, Lord, and underserved. Pairings for Girl Scout cookies, and breakfast cereal, and edible panties. Oh, Lord, what goes with edible panties better than wine from ancient bush vines? And yet these somms for the simpleminded are us as well.

Lord, hear our pleas. Let us be read and admired, let us be monetized through self-published books and newsletters, let our words be heard, our opinions carry weight, our business cards open doors to the most exclusive tastings. Ask not of us originality of thought, insight or integrity, for we have not the tools. Suffer us fools gladly, Lord, for we are but your fools. We walk our path to discover wine and expect others to walk fearlessly with us through the valley of the shadow of ignorance. We use our gifts to bless others with our wine wisdom and faultless palates, and want only to be recognized as a force for sales, and be taken on junkets where we can get drunk and be unfaithful, like people at real jobs do. We ask this humbly, Lord, though it’s only what we deserve. It was this, or a porn site on Tumblr.

I trust the Lord will answer your prayer. We definitely need some devine intervention with the true believers being held in the cleft of His hand. The others are following the Judas Goats.

Remember, the first miracle was the Lord turning poor quality well water into fine wine that was consumed by wine critics/bloggers (my eidit)at a local wedding after everyone was drunk and out of their minds. Probably drunk on 20%abv wine in fine crystal that was designed for each varietal wine offered.Isn't this the season of Lent? Forgive me Lord, but I just don't like the holier-than-thou.You wrote a Nice piece.

Hey Gang,I have no idea what this piece is really about. I was inspired to write a Wine Blogger's Prayer--I just had the title, not a solid idea. I was winging it the whole way, and, considering my non-religious upbringing, I also had no idea how to make it sound like a prayer. I left it in God's hands.

There's something about all prayer that is a cry to be noticed, to be heard, to feel worthy. Isn't that the exact definition of blogging? Maybe prayer is the attention-barking of lonely Poodles.

Ron:You hit a hot button with me. Wineries are their own worst enemy, they mindlessly pour (pun) money down a proverbial rat hole to buy mention from bloggers at a publication or event. These events and publications target the self annointed "washed". Or, plebeian's (in my view) striving for patrician status. I have never read a wine blogger at a tasting jump up and scream-"this wine is crap, it taste like crap, so it must be crap.

Steve,Wineries, like most of us, have always been their own worst enemies. It didn't start with wine bloggers. As for calling attention to wine that is crap, well, there's an old attitude that people don't want to read about what's terrible, they want to know what to buy. That's probably true. But I'm always aware of writers promoting wines to suit their agendas, which is a way of promoting yourself--whether it's Natural Wine, Wines in Pursuit of Balance (as fake as Natural Wine as a category), or Wines from a Recent Sponsored Junket. Way too much smoke being blown up way too many unsuspecting, ignorant butts.

David,You Canucks are the mountees, not the mounters...

It's unlikely Alderpated reads HoseMaster of Wine on a regular basis, if at all. Because, hell, no one else does either.

The whole thing over there has nothing to do with Ukraine; it's really about my blog entry regarding their hospitality. Can you imagine that they wanted me to pay for my own journey?

PS: I can hear the opening prayer of the next Wine Blogger's Conference. It's made up of the first line of each of your seven paragraphs, ending in a large howl and some tail wagging a la the raccoon lodge hat.

I can dream about the Wine Bloggers Conference, but, for the most part, none of them have a prayer.

My Gorgeous Samantha,No need to feel neglected, Love. You're the most uncommon tater of them all, and absolutely the sexiest. Isn't it enough to be Commander of Wine!'s pet? No, I guess it wouldn't be.

Remember, the first miracle was the Lord turning poor quality well water into fine wine that was consumed by wine critics/bloggers (my eidit)at a local wedding after everyone was drunk and out of their minds. Probably drunk on 20%abv wine in fine crystal that was designed for each varietal wine offered.

More spectator than active commenter lately but felt the need to chime in and say what fun it's been to see the end results of all of the ideas we discussed in Calistoga in your foray of latest works. This one is just as brilliantly funny as I'd hoped. Well, I'll admit that the boy scouts thing got me wincing a little bit, but I'm getting soft now that I'm a parent.

p.s. - Sorry that Parker guy brought you into his bizarre Anti-Asimov/Bonne agenda, that was pretty weird...

Sher Kahn,Are you the tiger? Or formerly married to the late Sonny Bono?

I've been wondering, did Jesus' first wine qualify as "natural?" Seems like it would be disqualified for too much divine intervention. And if Jesus can't make natural wine...

1WineDoody,It was great fun to hang out with you in Calistoga. Thanks for getting in touch.

Hey, any time Parker drops the HoseMaster's name, I'm fine with that. The whole overblown kerfuffle about his speech to the Napa Valley "Professional" (used in the same way Sears uses it for power tools) Wine Writers Simp/osium was great comedy, from my point of view. The "Professional" wine writers will know if they've made it one day, which is unlikely for most of them, when a speech they make is picked to pieces. The word "vultures" comes to mind.

Meanwhile, thanks for dropping in, my friend. And making people wince is a satirist's job.

EVO,Man, you're like the Internet equivalent of a photo bombing. A Blog Bomber!

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About Me

After 19 years as a Sommelier in Los Angeles, twice named Sommelier of the Year by the Southern California Restaurant Writers' Association, I moved to Sonoma County to explore the other aspects of the wine business. I've spent, OK wasted, 35 years learning about and teaching about and swallowing wine. I am also a judge at the Sonoma Harvest Fair, San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition and the San Francisco International Wine Competition--so I can spit like a rabid llama. I know more about wine than David Sedaris and I'm funnier than James Laube. Stay tuned for an informed but jaded view of everything wine and everything else.

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